Owen Marcushttp://owenmarcus.com
Masculine Emotional IntelligenceThu, 01 Dec 2016 01:52:42 +0000en-UShourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.6.1http://owenmarcus.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/firelog-logo-no-background-e1365975320347.pngOwen Marcushttp://owenmarcus.com
3232111950438OwenMarcushttps://feedburner.google.comDeveloping Your Feminine Side Doesn’t Workhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/GQGHZFaKbDs/
http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/developing-feminine-side-doesnt-work/#respondFri, 11 Nov 2016 21:09:06 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=6031This article was first published on the Good Men Project. For decades, we were told that we need to become more emotional. To do that we need to connect with and develop our feminine aspects. This is like telling a man that he needs to wear a dress to go out. No matter how beautiful […]

For decades, we were told that we need to become more emotional. To do that we need to connect with and develop our feminine aspects. This is like telling a man that he needs to wear a dress to go out. No matter how beautiful the dress is, I doubt it will look good on him. I certainly doubt he will enjoy wearing it.

All this comes from the fact that when men started leaving the family to go to work 10,000 years ago, women stepped up to train the boys how to be emotional. 200 years ago when we left the farm for the factory, there was very little male role model left. About all we had as masculine archetype was the macho model. We know how well that worked.

It was only natural that women, the emotional experts of our culture, adapted their model for men. When men were emotionally disconnected, they said to us, do it as we do it. Some of us got good at being, not effeminate, but an emotionally sensitive man.

We see men around us diligently working at connecting to their feminine sides, only to have women becoming more upset. We don’t understand it. We’re doing what she wants, but she’s not happy. Many of the women start to realize, you’re trying to do what she wants, but it’s not working.

Years ago when I was working in Boulder, CO I was in the center of the expanding New Age movement. Like most men in Boulder at the time, I was discovering my emotions. Many of my teachers were women. Some were therapists I studied with, others were lovers. My reading consisted of books like How to Be a Sensitive Man.

After a life frozen emotions, I felt set free. Feeling and expressing was my mantra. I found women were more attractive to me. They told me they felt safe with me. I thought found the key to women. I was proud… and arrogant how I had something other men didn’t have.

After a few years of relating to women as a sensitive man I began to see that something was missing. The passion would die off. We were good friends, but the charge that keeps a relationship exciting was gone.

One day it hit me. These women were as much a version of my mother as they were my lover. I set it up so they were in a subtle way taking care of me. I wasn’t standing up. It’s wasn’t standing up against. It was standing for.

Sure I could be vulnerable. I believed being vulnerable was all that was required. When the relationship would deteriorate, I would fix it by being more vulnerable. I had the feminine model down. I was teaching it at that point.

Slowly I started standing up to and for the feminine. That was as hard as developing my vulnerability. To my amazement, women responded positively. Rather than getting mad or rejecting me; they were turned on.

Once I realized what occurred I was pissed that no one taught me this earlier. I also felt like I now had the key the magic kingdom. It was working in men’s groups that I honed this skill. When I was able to stand up to and with other men, I immediately had more presence with women. It was as if the masculine training gave mes the elixir women wanted.

The Solution Lies with Men

No new therapy is going to fix this problem. No new shaming of men will get them to be emotional.

The solution comes from men. For the last 200 years, men have not had a brotherhood once they left school or the military. It’s that brotherhood that taught men for thousands of years. That brotherhood can still teach men today.

You would think, how can men who know nothing about emotions teach other men about emotions. That would be a concern if emotional development was an academic pursuit. It’s not.

For men, emotions are an active endeavor.

With our genome being 99.9% the same as it was 10,000 years ago in the tribe, men still have the instinctual wisdom of Masculine Emotional Intelligence. That wisdom comes out when men are interacting authentically with other men, much like 10,000 years ago.

Over 20 years of working with hundreds of men, we learned how to facilitate men developing skills they never had. Through many refinements, we created a set of “Principle and Core Skills” We use these to teach mean to feel their emotions, and guide them to teach other men as well.

The teaching is less about educating and more about experiencing ways to use your innate masculine skills to build a connection. One such skill is Assertive Vulnerability, your ability to stay open when you take a stance for something you care about.

The feminine model teaches us to be vulnerable. That is good. It doesn’t teach us to stand up while being vulnerable. When you master this, both men and women trust you. The next time you are interacting with a person, and you feel emotions building, Don’t repress them. Don’t disconnect. Don’t attack. Don’t collapse.

Feel what is happening.

Your body is always responding, start to allow it to talk to you. Listen to where you are getting tense. What does that tension what to do: run, fight or freeze? Whatever you feel is good—just feel it.

Listen to what the other person is saying.

The more accepting you are of your experience, the more present you will be to hear others. Listen with your body. Notice when another speaks, what is your immediate response? You don’t need to take action. You do need to be aware.

From your response, not your thoughts, respond. Risk being vulnerable and assertive.

Let his or her words impact you.

Notice if you are pushed away or drawn closer. Ask yourself what you want. All actions start with a want. Be clear on your wants. You may have an immediate want and a long term want. You may have a selfish want and a generous want.

The more aware and accepting you are of your own experience, the more room it creates for you and the other person to have a full experience. You have more ways to connect.

As you are staying connected to best of your ability to your own experience—speak what you want. The model we were raised in, teaches us to speak our feelings. Now, speak to express your desires and needs, which might be a better relationship with that person.

Try this out. Start looking at how you usually you respond to situations. Imagine what it would be like if you had more emotional tools to work with. Imagine if you had other men to practice using those tools with.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/developing-feminine-side-doesnt-work/feed/06031http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/developing-feminine-side-doesnt-work/How Vulnerable Are You Willing to Be?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/7UNn0dfYcYI/
http://owenmarcus.com/masculine-emotional-intelligence/how-vulnerable-are-you-willing-to-be/#respondMon, 05 Sep 2016 00:31:21 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=6019What is the toughest, most macho place to work? How about an oil rig? When Shell Oil decided to build the largest oil rig in history, to drill deeper than any other rig, they trained their men dig deep. For those men, digging deep meant digging into their emotions. This NPR report tells the story […]

When Shell Oil decided to build the largest oil rig in history, to drill deeper than any other rig, they trained their men dig deep. For those men, digging deep meant digging into their emotions.

This NPR report tells the story of how one man brought emotional connection to an oil rig. Harvard and Stanford’s researchers studied how, from opening up, these men made more money for Shell and had a reduction in accidents of more than 80%.

The reporter asked if what the men learned was how to be emotional like a woman. The man who brought the trainings to the men and a researcher who questioned them both said no; they said the men simply learned to be themselves.

Men don’t need to learn to connect to our feminine side. We need to learn to connect to that part of our masculinity that we lost. This story reaffirms what we’ve watched happen time and again for more than 20 years with men in our men’s groups.

Listen to the story. You can skip the first part, which is about another topic.

Would you risk being vulnerable to your co-workers? What are you missing from not opening up like these men did?

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/masculine-emotional-intelligence/how-vulnerable-are-you-willing-to-be/feed/06019http://owenmarcus.com/masculine-emotional-intelligence/how-vulnerable-are-you-willing-to-be/How Your Masculine Emotional Intelligence Will Improve Your Saleshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/vU0ID1FqDyY/
http://owenmarcus.com/men-in-society/masculine-emotional-intelligence-will-improve-sales/#respondSat, 20 Aug 2016 22:37:34 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=6014Recently I was on the English podcast Salesman Red discussing how men can improve their lives and their sales through applying what we teach. Here is the actual podcast, check it out. Getting Aligned with Your Plan After years of working with business owners and my own journey as one, I learned that possibly the […]

Recently I was on the English podcast Salesman Red discussing how men can improve their lives and their sales through applying what we teach. Here is the actual podcast, check it out.

Getting Aligned with Your Plan

After years of working with business owners and my own journey as one, I learned that possibly the biggest key to success and satisfaction comes from developing our Masculine Emotional Intelligence (MEI). We are much more likely to be doing what we want when we are high in MEI.

For many men, their biggest jump in success came from realizing what they were hard at work accomplishing was not what they wanted. It’s difficult to know what you want when you are disconnected from what you are feeling. If out of habit, survival or just training, you harden to dissatisfaction, you are not likely to feel the impact of doing what you don’t like.

We see men through our courses and free groups wake up to, “I don’t want this.” It takes courage to admit that years of hard work and sacrifice might not have been for what you wanted. So often we create an infrastructure around our “lives of quiet desperation.” When we allow that restrictive structure to dissolve, we are set free.

Connecting to Succeed

Another powerful tool for success is connecting not just to what you want, but also to what you feel. The bottom line: rarely will another person trust you more than you trust yourself. Sure, you can fool yourself and others, but that takes work and is not sustainable.

When you can allow yourself to feel your own experience, you have a powerful skill few men have. When you can be in a room aware of what you feel, in some subtle way feeling it, and when need be, expressing what you feel, then you have power.

As you connect and accept your experience, you are sending a subtle message to others that they can do the same. You are demonstrating that the space is safe. Through their neurons mirroring yours, as the brain scientists would explain it, you are leading others into trusting and connecting.

Many years ago, a friend who was a very successful businesswoman told me that changed how I viewed business: people buy people. I have come to learn how true that is. You don’t need to be the smartest, richest or best looking man in the room. You need to be your man. People will be saying, “I want what he has.”

I’m still working on perfecting this skill. I found that toughest meetings are the biggest lever for growth.

How will you develop these skills? In the comments, share how you are going to grow your MEI.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/men-in-society/masculine-emotional-intelligence-will-improve-sales/feed/06014http://owenmarcus.com/men-in-society/masculine-emotional-intelligence-will-improve-sales/A Shortcut to Success and Growthhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/PLZunwbdIlg/
http://owenmarcus.com/deep-change/shortcut-success-growth/#respondWed, 17 Aug 2016 13:22:20 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=6008[At the end of the post is a gift.] Men are realizing they are the one, consistent variable in their lives. So, if they want a different life, they need to change. When we think of change, we think of emotional change. For sure, your emotional state needs to change if you are to create […]

Men are realizing they are the one, consistent variable in their lives. So, if they want a different life, they need to change.

When we think of change, we think of emotional change.

For sure, your emotional state needs to change if you are to create the life you want.

What we aren’t taught is that there is a shortcut. There is a quick and often easy way to create emotional change, personal growth and professional success.

When you change your body, you change your life.

Science tells us that we store our stress and trauma in our soft tissue, and that soft tissue tension perpetuates, increasing the stress responses. Over the years, as your body became tenser it became more susceptible to stress and emotional reactions.

I see men struggle to break emotional patterns, patterns that haunted them for years. They would get a little change, then something would pull them back into an old destructive pattern.

A few of these men would look outside the traditional box of personal development to receive bodywork. The ones who saw the quickest and greatest change were the men who found a good Rolfer. With some men, decades of stress and limiting behaviors shifted in a few months, never to return.

I was one of those men 40 years ago. By nine months after my ten sessions of Rolfing Structural Integration, I was 3/4” taller and 20 lbs. lighter because my old stress left my body. But by far the biggest benefit was that I was relaxed for the first time in my life. Like many men, I never knew what it felt like to be relaxed. Once I felt relaxed, I began to feel happy. My relationships started working. I had the courage to pursue a career in Rolfing (SI). Within ten years I had the largest practice in the country, and I loved what I was doing.

Over the last 35 years, I’ve worked on every imaginable soft tissue issue and type of man. I had ditch diggers to Olympic athletes, surgeons who didn’t want another back surgery to Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) vets, who’d given up on getting better.

Your body and mind have an amazing ability to heal when the stress in your body is gone. Until the stress leaves, you are stuck in survival. Surviving is more important than healing, so all your resources go to surviving. You can strong-arm your stress response only so long; it will always return to sabotage relationships and your goals.

A lot of what we think is a psychological issue is a physiological issue. Your response under stress is likely to be a reaction to the stress and less an interaction with another person. A tense body is much more likely to react, as if it’s threatened. A stress response thwarts creativity or interaction.

You can’t Rolf yourself. You need to find a Certified Rolfer who is skilled at releasing the chronic tension. You can go to www.rolf.org, our professional organization to find a local Rolfer. Ask around for a recommendation. Interview the person. If he or she says they do gentle Rolfing (SI)—don’t use them. You need someone who can release decades of tension. Unlike what some will tell you, good Rolfing (SI) is not more painful than a good yoga class or workout.

You can read more about Rolfing (SI) on my website, www.align.org. There is a free ebook on how to walk and run naturally.

You are worth the investment! I get men emailing decades after their Rolfing (SI), telling me how their Rolfing (SI) continues to benefit them.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/deep-change/shortcut-success-growth/feed/06008http://owenmarcus.com/deep-change/shortcut-success-growth/Are You Being Taken Out by this Relationship Saboteur?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/VZi9xSfDQdc/
http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/taken-relationship-saboteur/#respondMon, 25 Jul 2016 19:28:06 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=5998I once had a client who struggled in every relationship he had. Falling in love was easy — maybe too easy. John would open himself up to his new love, he would give her everything she wanted, but inevitably the romance would wear off, and the deeper relationships issues would show up. John would start […]

I once had a client who struggled in every relationship he had. Falling in love was easy — maybe too easy. John would open himself up to his new love, he would give her everything she wanted, but inevitably the romance would wear off, and the deeper relationships issues would show up. John would start imagining his new partner was uninterested or worse, interested in another man.

At first, his partner would at right off his anxiety as him loving her. As he persisted, she became impatient with him not believing her. Her impatience evolved into anger, then when his behavior worsened, she’dd finally leave.

Every time John’s partner left, it proved to him again that most women are not to be trusted.. He reassured himself that next time he would find a woman who was trustworthy.

John friends saw the pattern: John would get overly attached to his new partner; she would want some space; he would feel he was losing her; so he became too clingy and needy; she would get angry and leave..

John joined one of our groups. The group helped him to see his pattern, and he was motivated to change. He wanted a real relationship, and he began to see he was the consistent variable in his failed experiment.

But even with all the understanding and support of the group, John found himself back into his old pattern, albeit at a lesser extent. With his new awareness, though, he was able to slow down his behavior pattern — but it was still playing out. Now knowing what he was doing and seeing how he kept doing it, John was scared. He didn’t want to lose Emily, his new girlfriend.

It was as if there was a computer virus that had corrupted John’s operating system. His unconscious pattern to create relationships where women continually abandoned him was his survival strategy playing out.

It turns out John was given up for adoption as a baby. He never met his parents. He grew up in a loving family who taught him how to love. In spite of a beautiful childhood, it was as if John never got to breathe a relaxed breath. Some part of him was always holding, on guard waiting for the person to leave. His computer virus was the unconscious belief that people leave. The closer they are, the more assured he was they will leave.

John’s a smart man. He got the connection. That helped take the shame away. He realized he wasn’t a bad man; he was just a man trapped in this old behavior.

[ctt template=”7″ link=”wO407″ via=”no” ]We all experienced abandonment. When it was traumatic, its power can haunt us for our entire lives as an unconscious relationship saboteur and inner terror.[/ctt]

Certainly, as a baby we can’t run or fight. We are fully dependent on our parents. When those that protect you perpetuate the trauma, even without malicious intent, you are stuck.

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) comes from trauma or serial stress AND your inability to respond. When you can’t run or fight that charge or need to act stays in your body. The nervous and endocrine systems stay revved up.

John appeared to be no more stressed than the next guy. But under the stress of a successful relationship where he built a bond with his partner, his dormant PTSD became activated. Some part of him is taken back to being a powerless baby, unable to effect change.

One night we did one of our Healing Journeys with John. Simply and gently we took John into feeling the physical experience of his PTSD feelings of abandonment. We encouraged him to let his subtle shaking increase. Within a few minutes, this big guy was shaking as if he were standing on one of those vibration platforms.

Through the next 30 minutes, we took John in and out of cycles of literally shaking off the held energy. We finished with him lying on the floor. As the group talked, John relaxed. Ten minutes later John shared how he felt the most relaxed he had ever been.

Over the course of the next few months, John was able to take that experience of releasing his unconscious fears into his relationship with Emily. When they came up, he knew what to do: rather than ignore or repressed them, he felt them. Emily, feeling John’s courage to allow his fears to run through his body,loved him more. They grew closer.

Over the next year John’s fear of Emily leaving melted away. It was replaced with a deep love that he trusted and received from Emily.

How Abandonment Had Me

Most of us were abandoned in some way. For some like John, it’s life defining. We all have fears that someone we care about will leave us. As men, we might discount our fears by saying we don’t need people. That was my coping mechanism for years. No matter how stoic I was, though, I always felt the need for a partner. Then when I had a partner, either it was hard for me to connect or, like John, I would become too attached.

I never had got to experience an unwinding experience like John had. I did what I needed to do to release the stress from my body. I learned to allow myself to feel what was going on, even at the risk of making a fool of myself. I also learned to speak what I felt and wanted. Sure, in the beginning, it was a little rough. After a few decades of attempting to perfect my stoic mask, I stumbled at communicating.

I began to notice when I was pushing my edge in communicating; people were always patient. Slowly I let go of my self-judgments and my awkwardness. I started to build connections with others that weren’t just in my head; they were ones I felt and trusted.

A New Frame

First, accept that abandonment happens. As kids, we don’t have the tools or power to deal with that loss. We do the best we can, and we survive. It’s when our survival is no longer an issue we get to heal a survival pattern that sabotages our relationships.

The research on our need for attachment shows us that we need to be connected to others. When we lose that connection, it’s painful.

Abandonment comes in many forms. Maybe your parents got divorced, or should have. Or maybe a close relative died when you were a kid. Many years ago I had a client who experienced nagging nightmares and unsuccessful relationships. In the course of a session, it came out she never went to her mother’s funeral. I turned the session into her mother’s burial. At the end of the service, the woman put her imaginary dirt on her mother’s casket before she was lowered into the grave.

Next week my client came back excited—no more nightmares. I don’t know how her relationships changed, but I could tell they began to change throughout her sessions.

Your abandonment might have been subtle. Possibly your emotional expression was shut down or ridiculed. Or you were held to unreasonably high standards. Having your parents see their self-worth through you or treat you as an adult or friend more than their child would set you up for abandonment. Being expected to be perfect, not being allowed to express feelings, or that feelings are not real, not allowed to have or express needs or having other’s needs being more important, can equally set up abandonment.

[ctt template=”7″ link=”eLU4b” via=”no” ]Abandonment occurs when parents cannot honor the boundaries between themselves and their child.[/ctt] Maybe your parents were unwilling to take any responsibility for their feelings, behaviors, or thoughts. When this occurs, it’s natural for you to take responsibility as a kid for what they are taking responsibility for.

In all these scenarios your parents were there. What was abandoned was the innocence of childhood. You lost your connection to being a kid. You also lost your ability to connect to others in an authentic manner.

A little rejection can set off set of irrational behaviors, such as: mood swings, anxiety, codependence, fear of being alone, and bouts of depression or anger.. We all know people who react disportionately to a situation. As with John, any of these can lead to a self-fulfilling prophesy.

You can see how love becomes defined by fear and anxiety, rather than safety and security. Even the best relationship can be sabotaged. We get good at hiding our abandonment through not forgiving, being mean, checking out, avoiding discussing problems, or denying anything is wrong. Then there is a favorite for us men—over work. It’s as if we abandon the relationship before it abandons us.

A Path to Healing

Abandonment is laid out like the stages of grief. S.W.I.R.L. is an acronym that stands for the five stages of abandonment:

Shattering: The intense fear and shock of loss after a severed relationship.

Withdrawal: The pulling away, while feeling yearning, obsession, and longing.

Internalizing: The other person is idolized while you take all the responsibly for what occurred.

Rage: Anger and a desire for retaliation at those who did not protect you, or left you.

Lifting: Normal life begins to distract you, where love becomes a possibility.

These stages may not occur as laid out, but in some form, you will go through them as you heal your abandonment. What is important is you keep the energy moving, meaning you keep feeling and expressing your emotion and wants.

All these stages set you back up to reconnect first to your own experience than to others. Abandonment severed your connection. You heal the hold your past abandonment has on you, will at some point need to risk. You will need to be vulnerable. That doesn’t mean passive. I mean Assertive Vulnerability, one of the five MQ traits.

In one moment you may feel needy. That’s OK. In the next moment, while feeling needy, take action. It is possible your need will not be met. You may still feel abandoned. But you broke out of the freeze stage of PTSD. That pattern of being stuck breaks when you act while feeling.

Each time you go through this cycle mindfully accepting your experience, you release the hold old abandonment had on you. You release the tension in your body, much like John did in his Healing Journey. In doing that, you free yourself from the hold of your PTSD. You liberate yourself from the unconscious and physiological bond of past trauma.

In doing this, you are doing what John did and what my old friend Peter Levine, PhD, discovered. You take the charge away through slowly and mindfully stepping forward while feeling the emotions of abandonment. Be vulnerable in the face of loss, build a sense of trust in others. Distance is something you will need to learn to tolerate so you can overcome the anxiety of separation.

As you do this, you stop being a victim and simply become someone who experienced abandonment. In connecting up to the parts of yourself that were abandoned, you have become more powerful and responsive. Learning to successfully communicate needs in intimate relationships becomes easy.

Accelerated Healing with a Group

We saw all iterations of abandonment in our groups. We also saw the power that a good men’s group has to help a man heal his abandonment. If that is an issue for the man, it will show up in the group. There is no better way to heal it than in the present moment while in a safe environment, like a men’s group. Often from just watching another man work with his abandonment, a man can begin to heal his own.

When you can show up as who you are and are accepted, abandonment melts away. Filling in the gaps of abandonment that are left with connecting to your community transforms your old abandonment. You learn to risk loss of connection to discover that courage to risk brings others closer to you.

Accelerated Healing with Your Partner

There is no better place to heal your abandonment and attachment challenges than with your partner. You can do it. Many others have, including me. I created a straight-forward mini course you can get by signing up for our Toolbox of Change Communiqué.

[ctt template=”7″ link=”C7_c5″ via=”no” ]Healing your abandonment sets you up to connect, allowing you to have amazing relationships. A key to unlocking the trauma of abandonment is vulnerability.[/ctt] The greater the vulnerability, the greater the healing. Sure, there is more risk, but feeling the vulnerability as you risk dissolves the abandonment. Try it. You will see it work.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/taken-relationship-saboteur/feed/05998http://owenmarcus.com/emotions/taken-relationship-saboteur/We All Are in Arranged Marriageshttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/Z7rzrj7PiMI/
http://owenmarcus.com/relationship/we-all-are-in-arranged-marriages/#commentsSun, 15 May 2016 03:25:17 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=5932You’ve met the love of your life. You fall in love, sex is great, you seem meant for each other. Time passes, and eventually, what felt like endless passion begins to feel like a trap. Your commitments become your sentence. Rather than looking forward to time together, you find yourself avoiding spending time together. Are […]

You’ve met the love of your life. You fall in love, sex is great, you seem meant for each other.

Time passes, and eventually, what felt like endless passion begins to feel like a trap. Your commitments become your sentence. Rather than looking forward to time together, you find yourself avoiding spending time together.

Are you bad? Are you stupid? Are you doomed?

No.

You are human.

We all enter into relationships with a hope they will bring us pleasure. And they do, but it’s hard to sustain.

Our first problem is that we were never given the tools to build the relationship we want. Then we bought into the fantasy that love is all we need. This is no different than going on a long journey with the hope of having magical experiences as you travel to your designation, without a map or a guide.

One day we wake up from our fantasy feeling trapped, wondering what happened. We are in our own arranged marriage. A marriage we never wanted. Until now we were under the illusion that we were in control.

We were—we arranged to be in a marriage that we didn’t intend.

What makes this tough is the belief that we escaped the unsophisticated for the self-determined. We were under the assumption that being free to create what we wanted, we would have that perfect relationship. We discovered that we learned a way to relate that is not relating. We deny or rebel to no avail. We stay trapped in more than a marriage; we are trapped in an arcane model.

The Gift

In an arranged marriage, what we might perceive as the trap can actually be a container for connection. In our free society, we expect our freedom to be our salvation. Here it might not be.

Our work with men and couples has taught us that as tough as it is, there is a huge opportunity in our arranged marriages. By bumping up against the edges of our relationship, we have a choice. We can step out, or we can step in. When there’s no place to go but into the relationship, we discover more about our partner, ourselves, and the potential of the relationship.

Without a new model and guidance, we are set up for misery. Without support in learning how to connect we will make others, rather than ourselves and the relationship, the problem. We are so deep in the forest, all we see are the trees.

We often see couples develop their connection skills and take a relationship – that they were sure was doomed – and transform it into a higher order of what they had years earlier, when they first fell in love.

Being trapped in their arranged marriage was the catalyst to finding a new model.

Make it easy

You don’t need to be in a struggling marriage for 20 years before you go, “What the hell, let’s get some real help.” You can start today; even if you aren’t in a relationship.

In or out of a relationship, developing your skill of connecting is the base for all change. This means becoming aware of and expressing your emotions and needs. Our courses, trainings and free groups are the training grounds for men. We are in desperate need of learning how to connect to our own experience and to another person.

The secret I discovered is that many men learn best with other men. For all men, it’s quicker and more fun developing their connection muscle with men. On a weekly basis I see men hone these skills, and then naturally develop a connection with their partner. Single men suddenly find connecting up to women they are attracted to easy and fun.

Don’t wait to be trapped. Don’t suffer when you can enjoy your arranged marriage. Start tonight, express a vulnerable feeling, then make a commitment to change your model from one of entrapment to one of love.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/relationship/we-all-are-in-arranged-marriages/feed/25932http://owenmarcus.com/relationship/we-all-are-in-arranged-marriages/Is Burnout Your Enemy?http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/cPCgbQH87sc/
http://owenmarcus.com/health/is-burnout-your-enemy/#commentsThu, 05 May 2016 14:50:55 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=5930Years ago, I was driving down Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, Arizona, when I starting nodding off. It was as if I had just driven from LA nonstop, rather than from my clinic a few blocks away. I could barely keep my eyes open. It was then that I realized I was exhausted and burned out. […]

Years ago, I was driving down Scottsdale Road in Scottsdale, Arizona, when I starting nodding off. It was as if I had just driven from LA nonstop, rather than from my clinic a few blocks away. I could barely keep my eyes open. It was then that I realized I was exhausted and burned out. After years of long hours and stress, I was one the seven out of ten Americans experiencing the effects of stress and subsequent burnout.[1]

I realized that my burnout represented me not getting the return I wanted on my investment. My long hours were not bringing joy to me. They were exhausting me. My body and mind was tired. My passion and drive was nonexistent. My work was beginning to suffer, and I didn’t care.

Are You Burnt?

If you aren’t sure, check out this Forbes article. If you are or someone you know is on the road to burnout, learn from others, so you don’t suffer needlessly.

Without changing direction, you risk not only less productivity and joy, you may injure yourself. While working at my clinic, one of the top trial attorneys in Phoenix was a client. After a few sessions, I fired him. I told him that, as much as I enjoyed him, I couldn’t help him. Unless he slowed down, allowed his body to relax, and fed it better, he was heading for a serious problem. Ten years later, I got a call. He explained who he was by telling me what I told him. He told me that, unfortunately, I was correct: he’d ended up having a massive heart attack.

When he came back to me for treatment, he could finally relax. He kept saying he should have listened to his wife and me. Being a guy and successful, he thought he could keep pushing it, so he did – until his heart gave out.

As he relaxed, he continued to tell me how much richer his life was. When he was pushing, his pleasure came from pushing through obstacles. Now it came from a quiet dinner with his wife or a hike in the desert. He still enjoyed standing in front of a jury, but it wasn’t his only pleasure.

There is a time in a man’s life when he needs to push. He needs to carve out his life. These are the times he’s away from his family. Many men come back home after this time to realize their family has left, maybe literally – maybe his wife has left him and they kids are grown and gone, uninterested in trying to connect with him. Or he realizes he wasn’t home for the years as his kids were growing. The pain of missed opportunities is deep.

In his honest reflection, he admits not all that he did needed to be done, nor was it all enjoyable. He became a hamster on his own wheel. It’s easy to get stuck on that wheel when we are stuck in the survival response of stress. Prolong stress becomes Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a milder version of what a returning soldier brings back from the battlefield. Just like the warrior who yearns to return to battle to support his brothers, many men want to return to their stress because that’s all they know.

You don’t need to burnout your family or yourself. Overwork today will exhaust your body, sabotaging your future. Your body is not designed to be under stress 24/7. Our ancestors weren’t chased by tiger 24/7.

Just because we can do it for a while does not mean we can do it for decades. Your adrenals burn out from constantly producing hormones to survive stress. As your vitality diminishes, you are vulnerable to becoming depressed, or, as many men experience, angry. You only want to do what you have to do. Stress become the motivator, the cattle prod that gets up. Even spending “quality time” with your partner or kids becomes another obligation that drains you.

The BS We Are Told

The problem is not wanting to be more of a man. The problem is whose man do you want to be?

While I had my clinic, I had a client who was a young man, a neurological pediatrician running a department for one of the hospitals in Phoenix. He had his dream job.

One day he came in to see me with a strange look on his face. I asked him what was up. He told me he had quit his job.

A few days earlier, he told me, he had looked in the mirror, and he saw a face he didn’t recognize. He saw the face of the person his parents wanted him to be, not what he wanted.

He then told me that he had never wanted to be a doc. After all the years of schooling and long hours of practice, he was burnt out. There was no joy in his life. He didn’t know what he wanted to do, but he knew it wasn’t being a doc. After completing his commitment to his hospital, he took an interim job as a pharmaceutical salesman until he discovered what gave him joy.

For many men cognitive dissonance convinces them that what they are doing is the right thing. That job or relationship shouldn’t be questioned. Man up—just get it done. The more we do that, the more dead inside we become. But if we acknowledged the dissonance, we might have to do something different. That would be scary.

When we start to drop this ball, we are told to pick it back up. These days we often reach for drugs to help us. Anti-depressants for the emotional exhaustion and caffeine or some stimulant to keep us going. When the pain gets too great, there are pain pills.

After years of crappy carbs and caffeine for energy, not enough exercise, poor sleep, and numbing with alcohol, your body, – hell, your very life – starts to fall apart. The stress you weren’t dealing deposits itself in your soft tissue. That athletic body you had when you were young is gone. You may start to believe what you are told: that you’re getting old, and you should learn to live with it.

You are living off your principle. You are depleting your vitality, the health you once had. You are set up to die young. Plus, with your burnout, you aren’t happy. You are trapped.

Solutions Few Use

There are many suggestions on how to deal with burnout.[2],[3],[4],[5],[6] Let’s explore the ones that work and are rarely suggested.

Men come to us because in some way life, their lives are not working like they want them to work. Maybe their relationship hit the wall. Or maybe they are doing well, but they know there is more. There is often a level of burnout. We get stuck and tired.

Doing It Alone

As men, we are trained to do it alone. We don’t ask for directions or support. We are quick to give advice or fix another’s problem. So when a man comes to one of our courses or comes to see me, it’s an act of courage. Maybe for the first time, he’s stepped out of his box of comfort and doing life in the way he was not trained. Often with just that act of courage, things will begin to move in his life.

Setting Boundaries

The next act is often setting boundaries with others and self. We are encouraged to meld with everyone. With social media, texting, and the demands of life today, there seems to be no escape.

We learn from our warriors that PTSD doesn’t always come from being in battle; it can come from the possibility of the battle happening at any moment. Always being ON, always being on alert, ready to respond – neither the human body nor the mind is built for that. Our ancestors weren’t always in danger.

When do you have time to renew? Vegging out binge-viewing a full season of Game of Thrones may be a start. It won’t rejuvenate you, but your mind will rest. Setting boundaries where you take the time to get out and do something that moves your body or mind will revive you.

With each activity, start asking yourself, “In the long run, will this take or give me energy?”. Will staying up to watch Late Night give me energy? Will saying no to a request to go out for the third night in a row give me more energy? I’m not saying every action needs to be beneficial. At the end of your week, were you taking more out or putting more into your life? If it’s a taking, are you avoiding something? What is easier to cover up with activities that don’t serve you than to look at and consider changing?

Structure of Support

What is your structure of support? Who has your back? Who do you call at 2 AM when all hell breaks loose? What do you do to nourish your body? I’m talking about more than feeding it. I’m talking about giving it foods and nutrients that renew it, that make you feel like you have the energy you need to live life.

As men, we rarely take care of ourselves – until we have to. Sometimes, by the time we realize it, it’s too late. You need that hip replaced. Your wife just leaves. Or you die and your kids don’t have a father.

There is research about how having a community of friends strengthens your immune system. More than vitamin C. And that might get you thinking, maybe you do need to be connected to others. We do. Just as we are hardwired to turn on the stress response to survive, we are hardwired to seek out connection.

How connected are you to your partner? Sure, you have sex. Sure, she’s your emotional go-to person. But are you really connected? Few men are. And because they aren’t, they gradually lose the benefits of connection and her love.

We work with women and couples as well as with men who discover that the problem in the relationship was not the other person or the relationship. It was how we defaulted to being disconnected. Learn how to connect. Sue Johnson, PhD. created a simple, yet powerful system to reset your connection. Short course: choose to feel and express over being right and reacting.

One way to learn to ask and receive support is to give it. Volunteer. Put yourself in a situation where you are called upon to be there for another person. Give to get. The men who take our trainings and go on to start a free group are blown away with what they get in return. They learn how to connect as a man and lead emotionally as a man. They also learn how to let the group give to them.

Move Your Emotions

We learn to sit on it, to hold our emotions in. When they do come out, they come out sideways with our passive aggressive comments. Or we seem pissed off all the time. Or we project our emotions on another, such as asserting ourselves with our partner when we needed to tell our friend no.

There is no better way to turn around burnout than to get emotional. Listen, you don’t need to be a crazy person – you need to release. I’ve had clients watch emotional movies to prime the pump to move stuck emotions. Men in our groups will go do one of our Anger Ceremonies in the woods. I’ve done several over the years where I let my rage out. The trees and rocks don’t care. Not only is it a release, it opens up channels in you; then when you need to express, you can.

Stuffed emotions and desires are the biggest cause of burnout. Creating ways to keep your emotions flowing will be the best prevention to burnout. Our free groups for men are that. Each week a man has an opportunity to express and be accepted.

Hard Conversations

One good way to move emotional energy is to speak the unspeakable. How can you expect to have all your passion and creative juices flowing when you are stuffing your emotions? What needs to be said that you aren’t saying?

You might to need to tell a person no – to set a new boundary with them. Maybe it’s telling your partner how much you love her. Sometimes the positive conversations can be the most difficult.

Fun

I know I can get too serious, too focused on work where fun drops out of my life. Create new ways to enjoy others, new ways to connect. Also discover that a walk in nature will change your brain. Connecting to nature is as powerful as connecting to your body as through bodywork. When we connect to these primordial parts of us, connecting to others become easier. With connection we begin having fun. With fun that connects to your body and emotions, burnout dissolves away.

Do It

Become mindful of your level of burnout. Get honest. If it’s there, take new action.

It’s easy to be in denial or unaware because we live in a world that expects more and more from us. We buy into the believe that more things will make us happy. Sure we can own some beautiful and fun things. But…

Do you wake up with excitement?

You deserve joy. And those close to you deserve it also. If it’s not there, what are you going to do to bring it back?

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/health/is-burnout-your-enemy/feed/25930http://owenmarcus.com/health/is-burnout-your-enemy/A Hero’s Yearhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/4VvAa5SEu9g/
http://owenmarcus.com/mens-work/heroyear/#commentsThu, 31 Dec 2015 14:03:51 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=5846We all do it; at the year’s end, we assess our achievements for the past year and plan our next year’s achievements. What we rarely do is step back and see the past year as a Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey; nor do we set up the next year as a new Hero’s Journey. After studying […]

]]>We all do it; at the year’s end, we assess our achievements for the past year and plan our next year’s achievements. What we rarely do is step back and see the past year as a Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey; nor do we set up the next year as a new Hero’s Journey.

After studying myths, literature, and history for decades, Campbell saw a pattern. This pattern is laid out in his Hero’s Journey. I’ve written about it here, here, and here. We are called (pushed) to start the journey because our current situation is not working. Along this venture, the unexpected happens to us. New mentors show up. At some point, we face a death, usually of our old way of doing things. Some part of our ego dies.

After our rebirth, we integrate our healing and learning. We return to our community a new man, hopefully, honored for our journey and transformation.

These journeys don’t usually follow a solar year. But at the year’s end, we have an opportunity to view our year(s) from this perspective. There is power in seeing your year from a place of deep change. It enables you to have more compassion for your mistakes when you can see what they taught you. Seeing periods of your life as a deeper process unfolding may give you a lesson that was not originally apparent. The sooner you get it, the sooner you can move on.

Emotional Revolution

In my TEDx talk, I speak about creating an Emotional Revolution for men—a revolution that sets men free from the limiting confines of our old emotional paradigm. This revolution came from a few of my Hero’s Journeys. Being hard-headed, I resisted giving up the old way. But as I finally surrendered, I began to see the possibility of something better. The work was in creating it first for myself, then for my clients, then the men in our free groups, and now for all men.

As much as I wish it were, this adventure is not done for me. It continues as refinements of developing my own Masculine Emotional Intelligence (MEI). I have to walk my talk.

I wanted this year to be the year our work took off. It wasn’t. It was a year of more healing. Healing I didn’t expect.

For a couple of years, I had a rash. I don’t get rashes. This one wouldn’t go away. I applied all I knew about holistic medicine to shift it. It wouldn’t leave. Then in September, co-ministering my friend Dan Doty’s wedding in Bozeman, MT, it came to me. I have leaky gut—a condition where the small intestine develops holes in its one cell thick layer. I felt like a fool not realizing it sooner.

I immediately got on it. In a month my rash was 70% gone, my exhaustion was gone and my mind worked better than ever. Within three months I gained back the fifteen pounds of muscle I lost. My weak, shaking arms were now strong.

As I do my year-end review, I see I didn’t get what I wanted—I got what I needed. After healing my dyslexia, Asperger’s Syndrome, dyspraxia, Lyme’s Disease and a tense body—there was one more thing I needed to heal to achieve what I want I my life. Learning more about leaky gut I realized I had had it since I was a kid, setting up low energy and a foggy brain.

I wanted this year to be the year. It was. But it was not the year of taking off; it was a year of completing a forty-year journey of healing my challenges. I allow myself to feel the disappointment of not achieving my success. I also allow myself to feel the good fortune of being set free from a life of low energy and brain fog.

I immediately had several sessions with different practitioners. I’m not into suffering when I know there is something I can do facilitate change.

What challenge did you take on, consciously or unconsciously in the past year or more? Where are you with that challenge? Who’s your support?

Celebration

I can be as guilty as the next guy of not acknowledging my success. I know that one of the keys to success, and enjoying life is to stop and experience the wins. Here are a few of my wins this year:

The group I started, the Sandpoint Men’s Group (which was the foundation for all my new work with men) is finishing its tenth year with a bang. In a town of less than ten thousand, we had more than two hundred men participate in our groups. The original group is now a community of four groups. In the last two months, we have had ten men ask to join our free groups. The most rewarding part is to see how men are living the lives they wanted. Marriages that were on the rocks are flourishing.

Struggling through school, there were two things I knew I would never do: write a book and give a real speech to a large group. I released my book two years ago, and it continues to climb in the ratings without any effort on my part. My TEDx talk inspires men and women. I appreciate that part of my success is due to tapping into the Zeitgeist of angst with what it is to be a man emotionally.

Our weekend trainings are taking off around the country, because men are looking for a simple way to win with emotions and to have a brotherhood.

If I’m going to continue to be a part of this Emotional Revolution, I need to continue to stretch myself. Now that I’ve done a book and speech, my next project is launching my pilot course for becoming an Emotional Superman. As with the other projects, my success depends on others helping me and joining what we are doing.

Two of my challenges are to ask for help… and then receive it. So, I’m asking for your help. If you are inspired by this course, give it a try. If you know of someone who might benefit, please share it. Thank you.

The Next Journey

Next year I’m turning my nonprofit, Men Corps into a 501(c)(3) tax deductible nonprofit. I want to be able to give men more free tools to create their free groups. I will also be releasing my Rolfing book, Power of Rolfing. I will continue to speak about our work. I’m scheduled for the Annual Interdisciplinary Conference of the American Men’s Studies Association (AMSA) at the University of Michigan.

There are a couple of big surprises we are working on 2016 that I can’t share right now… something to look forward to in this coming year.

A year from now it will be exciting to look back to see what was occurring beneath the surface. What was my Hero’s Journey for the year that initiated new growth?

What are your goals that will also be the vehicle of your growth? How will you add value to others? What do you want that you never had?

What new risks will you take? Not just upping your risks in the arenas that you usually play in, but in new places in your life? What relationship will you deepen or create?

Do what more and more men are doing: start your own free men’s group. Let it be the fast track to growth. Become the leader that you resisted in becoming. Be the leader of your own Emotional Revolution.

Raise your bar. Pick at least one friend and sit down and discuss your past year from the place of a Hero’s Journey, and plan your next year from the place of stretching emotionally. Then plan your structure of support for the year. Get support. Give support.

If a kid that almost flunked out of school, a kid who could barely speak because of a speech impediment, can write a book and give a TEDx talk, then you can achieve one impossible goal this coming year.

Let us know your challenges and goals to overcome them. Let us know how we can help.

]]>http://owenmarcus.com/mens-work/heroyear/feed/35846http://owenmarcus.com/mens-work/heroyear/My Journey to TEDxhttp://feedproxy.google.com/~r/OwenMarcus/~3/HB6F4dVctPc/
http://owenmarcus.com/being-a-man/5843/#commentsTue, 08 Dec 2015 00:41:27 +0000http://owenmarcus.com/?p=5843In my recent TEDx talk, What 10,000 Years of Progress Cost Men, I reflect on my forty-year journey on developing my Masculine Emotional Intelligence. As I mentioned in the talk, I started with a few challenges that I healed and learned from. Losing at everything made me resolute: I was determined to be successful in […]

In my recent TEDx talk, What 10,000 Years of Progress Cost Men, I reflect on my forty-year journey on developing my Masculine Emotional Intelligence. As I mentioned in the talk, I started with a few challenges that I healed and learned from.

Losing at everything made me resolute: I was determined to be successful in communicating, emotional interactions, and relationships. I first tried all the affirmations we receive as men, such as, “suck it up.” We know how well they worked.

With nothing to lose, I started putting myself out there. My failure rate was higher than my success rate. Tenacity proved useful, though; I slowly learned how to communicate. Once out of college I dove into every alternative health and psychological process I could find. Living in Boulder, CO, at the time, discovering leaders in these fields to study with was easy.

In a matter of few years, my life did a 180; I was actually successful in my relationships and happy. My relationships with women were real relationships. I could be with people. I wasn’t thinking about what to say—I was just interacting.

Once I began to see gains, I wanted more. I upped my experimenting, studying, and emotional risking. Being blessed with some incredible teachers early on to guide me, I started to feel normal. The next several decades were about how to take what I learned to create professional success. My biggest challenge was dealing with my employees in my business in Scottsdale, AZ. They taught me how to stand up for myself.

I was on a slow learning curve. Other than my initial teachers, I had no guidance. I was on my own as a man learning to be a man. Life became my non-empathetic teacher.

A New Model for Everyone

This new model of Masculine Emotional Intelligence is about men teaching each other what we never had taught to us. In a safe place such as one of our free groups, men – through the deep interaction – get to model, experience, test, and challenge this new model. Over time, collectively we help each other to fill the emotional gap between where we are as men, to get where we want to be.

To the extent we assist each other, women get to relax. For too long we were trained to rely on women to teach and mentor us. They taught us a lot as our mothers, teachers, possibly therapists, and partners. Buy they can’t teach us how to experience and express emotions as a man.

The evolution of our culture gotten us into this predicament. We as men need to get ourselves out of it. We can’t fix it with the tools the current model gives us, though; we need to go back to the tribe and its brotherhood to build our own Masculine Emotional Intelligence.

Ten years, more than 200 men through our Sandpoint Men’s Group, along with three years of trainings throughout North America, has shown us that this simple model works. When men connect as men, with other men, on a regular basis in a deep way—we transform our lives.

What’s Next

We need your help in sharing this new model. This TEDx video can be the introduction. I’m open to speaking, writing or being interviewed about how as men we can succeed emotionally.

We are now ready to take what we learned and shared it with a larger audience. After thousands of hours of refinement in live groups, we have a system that will give men what they want. Our live Two Day weekends are a blast, but they are limited in the number of men we can help.

To appeal to more men at a lower price point, we developed our Emotional Superman course. To hone the delivery of it, we are offering the pilot at a reduced cost. We need men to help us refine what we know works in live groups so more men can benefit. To jumpstart interest, we created a giveaway where the winner gets two admissions to the course.

For the man who doesn’t have a group or wants to start a group, this course could be the ticket. It certainly will shorten your Masculine Emotional Intelligence learning curve. You don’t need to work as hard or long as I did.

Your Help

We need your feedback. How does the course fulfill the mission laid out in the TEDx talk? Is it something you would take or recommend to a friend who is suffering from what I speak about in the talk?

Thank you for all your support over the years. It’s what launched me into doing the TEDx talk.

Owen

P.S. Here’s part of an email a friend sent me about the talk that brought tears to my eyes:Larry was very impressed. But here is a very big thing. We actually talked and he opened up… maybe just a little… but it is a start, after we watched it. This is huge. You made an impression on him, no small feat, and he actually heard what you were saying. I am sending it to Andy [her ex-husband] now and anyone I can think of.